Flora Kao (’08 Fine Arts) Exhibitions

Fine Arts alumna Flora Kao had several shows this summer:

1. Vestigial – Solo Project by Flora Kao

Vestigial archives the residue of trauma through a life-size rubbing of a stairwell charred beyond repair. In mapping these gestural black marks onto a nearby room, Vestigial highlights the uncanny effects of architectural accretion, where the awkward dimensions of a long narrow room echo those of a failed stairway to nowhere. Meditating on memory, displacement, and obsolescence, Vestigial salvages forgotten peripheries and palimpsests, speaking to the scars and voids left by things past.

Flora also had a solo show, Cocoon, earlier this year at Gallery 825, February 23 – March 22, 2013

Exploring the poetics of human relation to environment, Flora Kao transforms everyday structures into systems of beauty. With the installation Cocoon, Kao responds to the trauma of witnessing the prolonged suffering and loss of her grandfather. Sampling Taiwanese landscape and ancestor worship rituals, a kaleidoscope of color is projected through a webbed chrysalis crotcheted from vinyl tubing. This expanse of shifting shadows yields a space for meditation and metamorphosis.